Kakodaimonia

Definition

Kakodaimonia (Greek κακοδαιμονία) is the state of ill-fortune — literally the condition of having a bad daimon — and the negative pole of eudaimonia, flourishing. It is a quality of a life, not a place in the chart: the unhappy condition the philosophers traced to a person being too much swayed by that adverse spirit. (The twelfth place is named for the Bad Daimon, but kakodaimonia is the ethical state itself.)

In Tradition

Greenbaum uses kakodaimonia for the "cacodaimonic," unhappy life, grounding it in Posidonius: the cause of the emotions — of inconsistency and misery — is that people do not follow their inborn daimon. The notion grew from a view of excessive emotion as the work of a bad spirit. Unhappiness thus became kakodaimonia, the lot of a soul out of step with its own guide. It anchors the philosophical side of the Bad Daimon concept to a recognizable human condition.

In Practice

Meet this term where Hellenistic astrology touches its philosophical roots, not at any single chart factor. It names a life gone wrong through being ruled by the wrong inner pull, and it gives the twelfth place's "Bad Daimon" name its ethical depth. When you read the place of the Bad Spirit, kakodaimonia is the state the name reaches toward — not a verdict the chart hands down. It is the misery the tradition set against eudaimonia, flourishing in accord with one's own daimon.

Historical Origin

The term is treated in Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology (p. 151), where she quotes Posidonius (via Galen) on the unhappy, "cacodaimonic" life resulting from not following one's inborn daimon.

Etymology

Origin: Greek. Meaning: ill-fortune; the state of having a bad daimon.

Further Reading

• Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology
• Chris Brennan, Hellenistic Astrology